It’s tempting to wrinkle my nose at what those weird Russians are up to, but the word games we play, to pretend this is the same kind of republic the founding fathers created, they are in the same league!

Given what’s been replaced by now, why would the state go to such a cost to preserve dead or likely-fake flesh? What’s to say they’ve not simply replaced the body already with a fake? Seems like a ridiculous waste of time and money to such places.

A businessman checks into a hotel at the Red Square. The next day he sends a telegram home: “Send a thousand barrels of mouse oil.” When asked why, he describes the long queue in front of the building labeled “Maus oleum”.

What a waste of resources. And just plain creepy. Same thing for the Chairman Mao’s display in Tienanmen Square. And that one is a huge blot in the middle of a great public space. Why is it we humans feel such a need to worship individuals?

True, but it’s particularly weird given that the country Lenin represents doesn’t exist anymore – not just in a figurative sense of time passing and culture evolving as in the US, but literally. This would be like a future where the US broke up but a piece of it calling itself “The Southeastern Republic” still obsessed about Ben Franklin and John Adams.